Film First: Horror Show Special

Saw VI

Halloween wouldn’t be the same without the annual dose of Saw, apparently. Rumours abound that we will finally discover Jigsaw’s grand scheme for killing this time around. One theory is there will continue to be a Saw film each year until even the most hardcore fans will have lost the will to live.
Only then will Jonathan Kramer stop killing from beyond the cancerous colon. If you’re going to see, er, saw, this one, this is how it goes: the Jigsaw Killer sets life-threatening traps he calls ‘tests’ or ‘games’ for people he thinks do not appreciate their lives. Failure means death.
When will we see, er, saw, the end of it? Let’s be honest, only pornography can justify more than this many films in a series. Even Star Wars stopped at six.
2 stars

Zombieland

Some very silly comedy horror fun. Woody Harrelson hasn’t been this funny since Kingpin and Jesse Eisenberg isn’t just a comical face. Oscar-nominated Abigail Breslin from Little Miss Sunshine is in there too, as a handful of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world journey across America. Should be a fun evening’s escapism. The only danger is having to resist the urge to ‘take some zombies out’ with car doors, baseball bats, etc. when you spill back out onto the busy streets of Madrid...

3 stars

[•REC]2

[•REC] was handheld horror in the Blair Witch Project tradition meets a 28 Days Later infected/zombie flick, and burst out to become a worldwide cult movie. The Hollywood remake, Quarantine, served to further ignite interest in this Spanish film, reminiscent of the way The Ring gained more admirers for its Japanese original than it did for itself.
The danger for this kind of sequel is always that the bigger budget can mean the directors buy more fake blood, go for bigger frights and add all the effects they wanted but couldn’t afford in the original, to the detriment of the writing and tension that set the first film apart.

We rejoin the quarantined apartment block minutes after contact has been lost with those inside. An unsuspecting GEO team (Spanish equivalent of SWAT) is dispatched into the now bloodstained rabbit warren throbbing with the infected. It was terrifying the first time and it’s terrifying now. There won’t be a dry seat in the house.

2 stars

Twilight II: New Moon

If pop culture hates a void, teen pop culture more so. As the pre-teen and teen-fiction fans’ appetites grew ever more voracious and anxious with the Harry Potter series reaching its climax, Stephanie Mayer’s mix of high school romantic drama and vampires became a new, and bloody, feast for readers. The 13-year-old girls came, the 13-year-old boys came, then the whole teen horde devoured it. Since Twilight’s release in 2005, Meyer has gone on to spin the yarn into a four-tome series and sell over 70 million copies. The love story between the human Bella Swan and the vampire Edward Cullen in the series’ first book was turned into a movie that grossed almost $70 million in its first weekend alone in the US and Canada.

Like with the Harry Potter films, the books are already written and there will be no plot surprises for those who are already fans, just the satisfaction of seeing the live action depiction. For the rest of us – The movie begins with Edward breaking up with Bella and leaving town to protect and keep her away from vampires. The distraught Bella achieves visions of her lost love through dangerous pursuits and begins to forge a close friendship with Jacob, who is revealed to be a werewolf. Some girls have all the luck, you might say. But it does turn out to be fortuitous when Jacob and his pack of werewolves are able to save her from vampires (seeking revenge on Bella for the death of their companion in Twilight).

In the meantime, a Romeo & Juliet-style twist leads Edward to think Bella has killed herself and he decides he doesn’t want to exist without her. He travels to Italy to seek out and provoke the wrath of the Volturi, the world’s vampire royalty who ar

e capable of destroying him. Edward’s sister tells Bella and the pair set off to save him. Guess what happens next?
Revamp of the vamp romp.

2 stars

Final Destination 4

If you don’t know the formula here by now, here it goes: someone has a premonition of a horrific death, he and some other people spectacularly avoid their end as the vision becomes reality, the Grim Reaper doesn’t like it, one-by-one the group die increasingly unfortunate and grisly deaths. Unless you love 3D and are addicted to special effects, enjoy your Halloween
parties instead and get the first Final Destination on DVD afterwards.

1 star